[andrewla]

As a long-time[1] customer of Roku I am tentatively extremely pessimistic.

I have always been unhappy with Roku's decision to get involved in streaming content at all, because it could potentially cut into their service-agnostic architecture. Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware, but way worse when they are actively competing with streaming services.

And now it looks like it has happened -- a large content provider wants to buy the company, and while I hope that they can at least notionally continue to be service-agnostic, the temptation to cheat to favor your own services will always be there an when cost cutting and belt tightening is on the table, that is surely what will happen.

[1] My order for the "Netflix Player by Roku": "CustomerID# 1162 Thank you very much for your Roku order. Your order number is 2472, placed 5/20/2008 at 10:01AM."

[tmaly]

I have been reading these threads where people are patching firmware with AI. I am wondering if there is a way to fix some of the privacy issues on Roku tvs given this deal.

[Valord]

go on...

[jimt1234]

Roku hasn't been 'agnostic' since RokuTV or the Roku Channel, or whatever-the-fuck it's called. I watch with a GoogleTV device, connected to my Roku television through HDMI. A few months ago I started seeing these weird popups, saying something like, "I see you're watching 'The Goonies'. Why not watch on RokuTV?" It was bizarre, and a little creepy considering I wasn't using the Roku platform at all. As it turned out, Roku added a 'feature' for doing content recommendations. I disabled that 'feature', but it was still weird, like, "These guys are watching what I'm watching, even when I'm not on their platform!"

[dylan604]

> Bad enough in my mind that they had in-platform ads instead of just charging for hardware

I mean, of course they did. If you were running a company and had to choose between a one-time relatively small fee vs a life time of near constant ad driven income per user, which would you choose?

[andrewla]

Obviously preferences vary, but I would prefer to accumulate the goodwill rather than the ad fees. I'm not a saint and I would probably try to have some sort of "buy the roku streamer v7, now with <some new feature that I don't backport>".

In the end the tradeoff is pretty rough; judging by alternatives, keeping the cost of the stick low requires that they do the ad thing. I say that I would pay more for an ad-free version but I never went out there and bought the nvidia shield for example even though I'm told it's a good experience.

[dylan604]

You have to realize that you are not in the same financial situation as the vast majority of people (based on the hoity-toity nature that HN readers are all well paid). The vast majority of people just accept ads as part of life and do not care one bit about the evils of the adTech world. If they are able to get a service essentially for free or at least a significant discount, they don't mind ads. Most people don't even notice them. If an ad free paid for service was the only option, I'd suggest that a lot of the user numbers would drop.

I'm a weird person in that I'm not anti-ads, but I am anti-adTech. Commercials on OTA broadcasts are good times to get up and get a refill, go to the restroom, are just hit the mute button. The days of DVRs were glorious as well as you could just fast forward through the ad breaks. Streaming platforms are the absolute best thing that ever happened to adTech. They cannot be skipped. That guarantees to the ad buyer that they will get their air time which helps adTech push ad buy rates.

The money made from advertising is not to be dismissed. It can be very significant to bottom lines, just ask Vizio* where they make more money on data than they do from the hardware sold used to collect that data.

*https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...

[bmelton]

I was also super-early Roku customer, but frankly I have been mostly disappointed with Roku for the past year or so.

The hardware on the top tier devices doesn't seem to keep up. Interacting with it is slower and more laggy than it originally was.

They've tried to keep them unobtrusive, which I appreciate, but the mere existence of ads is disappointing. I almost give the Roku City ads a pass, because frankly that's clever, and mirrors the real world enough that it seems logical to me -- but ads in menus is grating.

CEC has been super flaky with the latest revisions as well, so for the past couple of weeks I've been relegated to using either the Roku remote or my phone instead of my TV's remote.

I'm a big fan of waiting to see before prejudging, but I can't imagine anything gets better post-acquisition, and I was already on my way out the door. I guess I'm buying an Apple TV now? Are there any other recommendations? I haven't kept up with the space at all, so if anyone has suggestions I am super happy to receive them.

[andrewla]

The lagginess is a puzzle to me; one big selling point of the Roku (vs. e.g. the Amazon Fire Stick) is that it is so much more responsive, but newer models have been getting worse instead of better.

The last time I used Apple TV I was disappointed, and since they are a streaming provider themselves I expect this to get worse rather than better. Even very basic UI things like "what block in the UI is the cursor currently selected" are painful, and the navigation flow mirrors the navigation flow of the Apple TV app on Roku, which is already pretty bad -- navigating the a series page from a single episode is a tortuous multi-step process that involves getting the incantations exactly right or being reverted back to the main screen and losing all context.

The moat here is mostly just having widespread and maintained support for streaming services, which is a question of scale; that's why so many "Smart" TVs get stale after a year or so while Roku stays fresh. In 2008 I paid (in 2008 dollars) $99 for the Roku. The price now is much lower but I would probably be willing to pay that amount for a fresh device that is performant and agnostic to streaming services and no ads (including those remote buttons) and has a straightforward UI.

[bmelton]

Thanks for the response. As a lifetime Plex passer, I am inured to having to re-learn the navigation UI with every new release, so that part can't be too bad.

But yes, I would be thrilled to just pay $250-300 for a hardware device that just did quickly did what it was supposed to do and didn't look too ugly in doing it.

[Noaidi]

Yes, let the enshitification begin.

I have never seen a mergre like this not lead to anything but a money grab. They will no doubt remove things like PlutoTV, which is free, and substitutte it with more subscription apps and more data collection

[nerdsniper]

I’d be shocked if the Jellyfin App survives this. Plex probably will, as a for-profit company it has the war chest to buy placement/attention/app approval. But i prefer jellyfin because it doesnt try to sell me anything or tell me what to watch.

[mleo]

Begin? I haven’t heard anything positive about Roku in 10 years or so. They had to race to the bottom to compete with Amazon and Google. And maybe they mostly survived til now, but all I hear is complaints about ads.

[legitster]

I think the complaint about ads is mostly a knee-jerk reaction by certain online communities. The ads are not particularly obnoxious - they are always off to the side and don't interfere in navigation in any way.

Furthermore, I'm on a Roku looking for content and the ads highlight content. It's not that different than seeing posters on the way to a movie theater.

[WarmWash]

There is the long standing problem that if you build a road for others, and others get unfathomably rich using that road, you end up looking pretty dumb.

[kbelder]

And yet, advancement of civilization depends on that.